Fragmented Rays of Labor, Christmas Eve: Asha's Beginnings Chapter 12
Fragmented Rays of Labor, Christmas Eve
Asha’s Beginnings: Chapter 12
Continued from Four Moons More
Christmas Eve morning broke cold over the frozen pond, the year 2025 still young in its winter grip, when the message came loud, rippling through the invisible air like a breath from Rome, carried. Kneeling there, the silver thread coiled in her palm, Asha felt it before she heard it: the Pope’s Urbi et Orbi, his solemn call for peace carried early across the lands.
“Peace across the land,” the voice intoned within her, solemn and far-reaching, a benediction over a world still burning. He spoke of unity, of laying down arms, of the newborn Child as a beacon for all.
Yet the words unsettled her. They widened the rip already dividing her bloodlines. Peace? she thought, her breath clouding the air like unspoken prayer. How can peace come from a world that silenced its own mother? The creator of Love, womb of stars, breath of rivers, erased and diminished, her rays scattered into saints and virgins, her power hollowed. Children made into saints for bowing before those who ripped out their souls and stole their innocence?
Rising, dusted with frost, Asha followed the faint glow of a distant square. A flickering screen projected the Pope’s face to the gathered crowd, his voice trembling with conviction: “Let us build bridges of peace, for the sake of our shared humanity.”
Candles lifted like small suns. The people murmured amen. But to Asha it all rang hollow, words that skimmed above the soil where true life stirred: the mothers, the healers, the unseen hands mending what war had torn. They who wove silver threads from tears, who kept hearts from unraveling while men tore continents apart.
Then her father’s Rosengarth blood surged, the East Prussian Catholic sentinel of discipline and devotion.Woywod stern and firm. It whispered of order, of the Church as vessel, the Pope as shepherd calling scattered sheep home. Peace through obedience. Salvation through one light, Father, Son, Spirit, unbroken and divine.
But her mother’s blood flamed up to meet it, wild and ancient, Tudor, Celtic, thorn and oak. Love’s creator ignored. The patriarchal force itself roared beneath her ribs, but Mary's labor managed to still breathe life into moor and mist, fragmented, her light refracted through a thousand living forms. One source indeed, but splintered into every root, river, and womb. How can peace be declared from marble halls that forget the womb where creation breathes?
The ache inside her deepened. Her veins felt like battlegrounds, catechism clashing with chant. She clenched the silver thread, its teardrop bead cutting into her palm like truth. Why must divinity divide itself? Why must peace be preached from above when it is born in the breath below?
Village bells began to toll then, their deep notes drifting like a carol half-sung, tender and trembling through the morning frost. Asha stepped back into the shadow’s edge. The Scotsman waited there, silent, his gaze steady as a promise.
And in that stillness, something softened. The tearing paused. The two faiths within her, once warring, seemed to share the same breath. Perhaps the bridge was not a choice of sides but a weaving, light through thread, fragment into wholeness.
As the sun climbed pale gold into the winter sky, Asha felt the shift, a fragile reconciliation. The Pope’s flawed plea might yet be a beginning, if the forgotten rays were gathered into the same light.
Her story. Her blood. Her peace to forge.
To be continued...
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